Questions for Peter Janney on his book Mary’s Mosaic

[Guest Tom Scully]

Tom,

The reason he uses Alford in this reply is a point which I am going to take him to task for in Part 2 when I discuss his methodology.

I figured that, as part of the book's scheme he would exalt Mary Meyer to Dianaesque heights. And he would then diminish JFK in order to make it appear that he really needed the single Mom to enlighten him about foreign policy while she was giving him Leary suppllied drugs. Which is what he does.

But I was really a bit stunned by just who he went to in order to make Kennedy into a shallow playboy without a clue as to how the world works or who Allen Dulles really was.

Suffice it to say, its pretty sad stuff: Collier and Horowitz, Kitty Kelley, Edward Klein, Priscilla Johnson, and drum roll please, Sy Hersh. Bravo Peter!

In the entire book you will not see the name of Edmund Gullion. Which is really kind of shocking and revealing at the same time.

Because if you do not know who Gullion is, when and where young Kennedy met him, and what he taught him, then you cannot understand who Kennedy was and why he was anathema to the Dulles Brothers way before he got elected.

The Mighty Wurlitzer stacked the deck so as to shape the brains, politics, and consciousness of several generations in such a narrow and warped to the right sort of way, and then a minion whines about your attempt to reshuffle it. Who do Janney and his fellow indoctrinated puppetbots think they are fooling; everybody?

Yes, it is even worse than our worst fears! :

Adlai Stevenson and the world: the life of Adlai E. Stevenson

John Bartlow Martin - 1978 - 946 pages - Snippet view

.....Stevenson had been corresponding with Dr. Henry Van Dusen of Union Theological Seminary, who had heard that Kennedy was sexually promiscuous. When Stevenson asked if this was fact or rumor, Van Dusen replied that the stories had first come to him from Reinhold Niebuhr, who said he had asked Galbraith and Schlesinger about them and said they had dismissed the matter as inconsequential. Stevenson sent the letter to Schlesinger with a remark that he wished he could "keep a mile away from such matters.

Schlesinger felt the same way. He said that if such stories were true they did not bear "essentially" on Kennedy's capacity to be President; that the stories were "greatly exaggerated" and usually heard in Northeast Harbor, Fisher's Island, East ...

http://www.sfgate.co...ies-2336539.php

Blair Fairchild Fuller, former editor of the Paris Review and Stanford creative writing teacher, died July 23, 2011 in Petaluma at age 84.

In the 1970s, Norman Mailer dropped by a San Francisco bookstore owned by his old friend and fellow writer Blair Fairchild Fuller.

1. 
   Cass Canfield - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
   en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cass_Canfield They married in 1938, and Jane Canfield died in 1984. By this marriage Canfield had three stepchildren: Jane Sage Fuller, Blair Fairchild Fuller, and Isabelle ...
   
2. 
   BLAIR FULLER Obituary - Legacy.com
   www.legacy.com/obituaries/nytimes/obituary.aspx?pid=152823335
   Jul 31, 2011 – Read BLAIR FULLER's life story, offer tributes/condolences, send flowers or ... FULLER--Blair Fairchild, passed away in Petaluma, California, on July ... 1927, and his stepfather was Harper and Row publisher Cass Canfield
   

Letitia Baldrige Is Wed To Robert Hollensteiner

New York Times - Dec 28, 1963

Miss Letitia Baldrige, former social secretary to Mrs. John F. Kennedy, was married here ... Her only attendant was her niece, Miss Alice Baldrige, who wore a ...

Alice E. Baldridge Sets Wedding

‎New York Times - Jan 21, 1979

...Mr. and Mrs. Robert Connell Baldridge of LI, their daughter, Alice Elizabeth Baldridge of New York, to Delos Walker Wainwright, son of Mr. and Mrs. Caroll Livingston Wainwright ...

HyperWar: Herringbone Cloak--GI Dagger: Marines of the OSS - ibiblio

http://www.ibiblio.o...rwar/USMC/USMC-OSS/USMC-OSS-13.html

Hayden's OSS superior was 24-year-old blueblood, Stuyvesant Wainwright II, a wealthy conservative who later served two terms in Congress. Wainwright delighted in taunting Hayden about his passionate support for Tito...

STUYVESANT WAINWRIGHT Obituary: View STUYVESANT ...

www.legacy.com/obituaries/.../obituary.aspx?...stuyvesant-wainwrigh...

Mar 14, 2010 – Online Obituary for STUYVESANT WAINWRIGHT. Read STUYVESANT ... He is also survived by his brother, Carroll L. Wainwright. A memorial ...

................................

George Ohrstrom was an usher in Peter Matthiessen's (of the Paris Review and the CIA) wedding, as was the sister-in-law of Richard Ober of CIA. Usher Thomas Guinzburg would later hire Jackie Onassis. He was Matthiessen's Yale roommate and presented as not being witty to Matthiessen's CIA affiliation, but Guinzburg's father was OSS minister of propaganda (OWI) and immediately after WWII led a US intelligence program intended to influence what would and would not be suitable subject matter for publication.....

........

Issue Date: Ridgefield Holiday '09-'10, Posted On: 1/4/2010

Enchanted Lady

The colorful columnist is moving into Ridgefield

.....Soon, Foxy met Fred, a graduate of Groton and Harvard, and they married in 1952. When Fred’s career took off, they moved to Los Angeles to a house no agent wanted to show them, at the crest of Laurel Canyon and Mulholland. “It was a simple house with a small backyard,” Foxy recalled. “At night you could hear the coyotes, and there was the smell of beautiful trees.” In L.A. the Gwynnes’ best friend was Dom DeLuise. “He wasn’t known yet,” Foxy said. “He was so funny and a great cook who made amazing pasta.” They hung out with Al Lewis, Fred’s co-star on “Car 64, Where Are You?” and “The Munsters.” Foxy was pals with Lewis’s first wife, Marge. “We bonded over how much we both hated Hollywood.”

....In New York, the Gwynnes had friends in Bedford. Cass Canfield went to Harvard with Fred and was the publisher of Harper’s. “The Canfields lived on Guard Hill Road and they threw the most wonderful parties,” Foxy said. Out-of-town guests always included writers, which is how she met George Plimpton, Peter Mathiesson, and Truman Capote. Foxy wasn’t thinking of herself as a writer yet, although she was writing about her friends. “Four very smart women from down county who were bored with dinner parties decided to start a magazine,” she said. “They called it Of Westchester. The editor was Vita Nelson and I sent her a piece I wrote about Cass Canfield. She called to tell me it was the most refreshing thing she’d seen.” She wrote ten profiles about friends. When the editor wanted her to branch out and write a piece about bachelors, Foxy balked. “That was just too much work,” she declared....

http://www.fergusonm.../landtrust.html

......envisioned the need for wildlife sanctuaries on Fishers Island.

In 1978, the Land Trust grew exponentially when Erard A. "Matty" Matthiessen and his son Peter donated an 8-acre property on Island Pond (Oyster Pond) as a sanctuary and memorial for Elizabeth C. Matthiessen, Matty's wife and Peter's mother. Mrs. Matthiessen, a long-time seasonal resident of Fishers Island, was actively involved with the H.L. Ferguson Museum and loved the Island's natural beauty and wildlife. The Betty Matthiessen Sanctuary, the first land trust property on the east end, features a trail that provides intimate views of the surrounding pond and its diverse wildlife.

The article mentioning George Plimpton refers to Cass Canfield's son attending Harvard with actor Fred Gwynne.

The Dulles's grandfather died on Fisher's Island in 1915. CIA's Thomas Parrott had a home there, CIA's Porter Goss has a home there. There are less than 250 fulltime residents on Fisher's Island.

Cass Canfield, 70, Plans a Busy Career as Editor; Past and...

‎New York Times - Aug 20, 1967

Interviewed in his cozy summer home here, Mr. Canfield laughed as he called' ... spy stories by Allen W. Dulles, former head of the Central Intelligence Agency, ... of the executive board of Harper Row, relaxes at his home on Fishers Island.

Mrs. Louis DeB. Moore, wife of the Tiffany & Co. executive, invited Prisicilla's father, Stuart H. Johnson to her and her husband's Fisher Island home in summer, 1938. Mrs. DeB. Moore headed the Birth Control League. The League changed its name to Planned Parenthood in 1942. Cass Canfield was a Planned Parenthood executive for many years until his death. Canfield collaborated on a book on spycraft with Allen Dulles in the mid 1960's and was the editor of Dulles's memoirs.

One small group consisting of OSS / CIA and Office of War Information staffers, under the intertwined organizations of most popular and connected book publisher, Harper & Brothers, Cass Canfield, Chairman, and the Paris Review led by George Plimpton, Peter Matthiessen and John PC Train, determined who was published and who wasn't and dominated the entire prominent literary "offerings" related to the assassinations of President Kennedy, his brother, Robert, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Matthiessen's wedding usher in 1951 was a fellow Paris Review editor and a stepson of Cass Canfield.

Francis Plimpton was implicated in the CIA student funding by being on the board of Houghton's fake foundation. Plimpton's brother was chosen by Amherst board chief John McCloy to be Amherst President.

Plimpton's law partner was the Eli Whitney Debevoise, McCloy's HICOG counsel and then Deputy HICOG.

DeBevoise's father, Thomas, had the longtime job of counsel to John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and McCloy replaced him when Thomas retired.

John and David Lindsay, twin brothers and ushers in Nancy Bush's wedding, were the brothers of George Lindsay, hired by Plimpton & DeBevoise in 1947 until he retired as managing partner. David Lindsay was a Yale football teammate of Nancy Bush's best man, William B. Macomber, Jr. Macomber was selected by Houghton's successor, C. Douglas Dillon, to be president of the Met. Museum of Art. Macomber was also best man in Tom Devine's 1973 wedding. Devine was hired by Macomber's brother, John, as a V.P. at Celanese in 1973, and Tom Devine was affiliated with Paris Review's John PC Train for more than 40 years.

If you are going to write a book about an assassinated, popular president and a mistress who you claim fed him illegal drugs, why not be scholarly and responsible enough to dig deep and cover much more of the actual history, and if you aren't prepared to do that, why bother?

Isn't it fair to say there are Rockefellers and CIA spooks a bit too embedded in the ties to Mimi Alford, Plimpton & Debevoise, and John McCloy, as well as to three generations of the Bush family?

Edited July 7, 2012 by Tom Scully

[Dawn Meredith]

Tom,

The reason he uses Alford in this reply is a point which I am going to take him to task for in Part 2 when I discuss his methodology.

I figured that, as part of the book's scheme he would exalt Mary Meyer to Dianaesque heights. And he would then diminish JFK in order to make it appear that he really needed the single Mom to enlighten him about foreign policy while she was giving him Leary suppllied drugs. Which is what he does.

But I was really a bit stunned by just who he went to in order to make Kennedy into a shallow playboy without a clue as to how the world works or who Allen Dulles really was.

Suffice it to say, its pretty sad stuff: Collier and Horowitz, Kitty Kelley, Edward Klein, Priscilla Johnson, and drum roll please, Sy Hersh. Bravo Peter!

In the entire book you will not see the name of Edmund Gullion. Which is really kind of shocking and revealing at the same time.

Because if you do not know who Gullion is, when and where young Kennedy met him, and what he taught him, then you cannot understand who Kennedy was and why he was anathema to the Dulles Brothers way before he got elected.

Of all the people to go to why on earth choose that horrid group? Wow. Not a trustworthy name in the group. Reading all this is reminding me of a close jury trial where after hearing one side you are convinced, then the other side pulls you over to that side, then it's back again.

Dawn

[Kathleen Collins]

Why on earth would anyone believe a xxxx like Tim Leary in the first place?

BTW John, do you also buy that Leary had a dalliance with Marilyn Monroe?

Supposedly every man she met she fooled around with. It's baloney. She did have affairs with married men. She was also an alcoholic and a drug user. Everyone either enjoyed her favors or spoke to her on the phone that last night. I never heard a connection having to do with Tim Leary, his LSD and Marilyn Monroe. I don't believe it.

Do any of you remember "Mr. ED" the talking horse? The man on that show -- Alan something -- later became a minister. But before "Mr. Ed" he claims he met Marilyn Monroe and they hit it off in the late '40's. He wrote a book about it.

I think these claims are ridiculous.

Kathy C

Edited July 8, 2012 by Kathleen Collins

[Douglas Caddy]

The Autodafé of Lisa Pease and James DiEugenio:

Tomas de Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition return in a new era of suppression

of freedom of thought and adherence to a rigid dogma – namely their own prejudices!

Lisa Pease’s six-page diatribe against me and my recent book Mary’s Mosaic is, at the very least, a marvel of subjective distortion and shoddy criticism, fueled by her own personal vendetta that someone dared not follow her as she, and her partner James DiEugenio, have attempted over the years to appoint themselves as the ultimate “guardians of truth” in all things Kennedy (see the following: http://www.ctka.net/...9;s_Mosaic.html ).

And as usual, Lisa Pease’s only fallback source in her vain attempts to substantiate anything she writes is James DiEugenio, whom she seems to always regard as unassailable. Together, nothing that these two write can ever be challenged or debated – without one of them launching some kind of personal diatribe against anyone who challenges it, establishing a different opinion. Indeed, during his last appearance on Len Osanic’s Black Ops Radio program (June 28, 2012), DiEugenio gushes over “Lisa Pease’s wonderful – and I really think it’s a really wonderful piece of work . . . because it’s done in her usual very intelligent, very elegant, very incisive kind of a style. And I’m going to be doing Part II to which I am actually working on right now . . .” We wait with bated breadth.

What’s particularly revealing in Pease’s latest piece of writing is that she first announces to her readers that she “check every fact, . . . dare[ing] the author to prove his case to me,” and then goes on to continue (along with her partner DiEugenio) to make the absurd claim that JFK was not a womanizer, or sexually promiscuous, but always “adorable and sweet,” (quoting Angela Greene). We are now, after years of revelation by such authors as Ralph Martin, Seymour Hersh, Nigel Hamilton, and Presidential historians Michael Beschloss and Robert Dallek – to say nothing of the women who have come forward (the most recent is Mimi Beardsley Alford in 2012) – supposed to go on believing “The Doctrine of Pease and DiEugenio” that this was all just a “Republican Party” or “CIA” plot to discredit President Kennedy. Following “the two McCarthyites of the JFK assassination research community,” as one researcher recently put it, is like walking into a never-ending fantasy world of ignorance, hopefully having been convinced that the real truth has just been dispensed, when all that has taken place in this case is Pease’s fabricating evidence in order to gin up “facts” to support her delusions.

I am not going to try your patience as a reader by writing six pages of rebuttal, though I easily could take issue with every aspect of Pease’s tangled web of claims where she can’t even correctly restate what I wrote. Indeed, it becomes clear that Pease’s greatest talent is attempting to bestow upon her readers her own vitriolic projections that have no basis or understanding of fact. In doing so, she identifies herself as an intolerant critic who must torture (and therefore misconstrue) the facts in an effort to win an argument, so typical of a fanatical mindset that can’t consider any real alternative other than its own projections.

And so, despite the fact that there was absolutely no forensic evidence whatsoever (as documented in the FBI Crime Report, which was withheld from the defense until the beginning of the trial nine months after the murder) linking Ray Crump, Jr. to the bloody crime scene or to the body of Mary Pinchot Meyer, Lisa Pease wants her readers to believe, as she does, that Ray Crump was actually guilty, because some of the clothes he was wearing that day matched what eyewitness Henry Wiggins, Jr. saw when he viewed the man standing over Meyer’s body within 30 seconds after the two gunshots had ended her life. Wiggins was 126.5 feet away from the murder scene. This was all documented in 1200 pages of trial transcript, something that Pease fails to mention to her readers, because she never read or studied it.

Still, Pease omnisciently claims that in viewing just one picture of Ray Crump in my book, she (and she alone) has decided to proclaim that Crump does, in fact, have a “medium build,” and that Wiggins’ description is completely accurate. Wiggins obviously saw somebody who wore similar clothes to Crump that day, but I maintain it wasn’t Ray Crump. Then, ignoring everyone else’s disposition toward Crump, including his attorney Dovey Roundtree, public defenders George Peter Lamb and Ted O’Neill, and anyone else who actually had contact with Crump at the time of the murder, Pease becomes convinced he was only acquitted because he had “a very astute lawyer.” Never mind the lack of any real evidence, or the fact she was shot execution-style with a gun that was never recovered, or that no one in Ray Crump’s family or community had ever seen Crump with any firearm. To further make her case, Pease invokes the authority of author Nina Burleigh, who like Pease is sure of Ray Crump’s guilt, but who can’t even correctly document the jury’s composition, in addition to a number of other important neglected facts.

Then, hanging her hat on the fact that because Crump lied (he was concealing a tryst with a married woman) about why he was in the vicinity of the towpath that morning, this is further proof to Pease of Crump’s guilt. Our Dick Cheneyesque “cherry-picker” of facts then takes her distorted proclamations even further. Creating her own testimony, Pease suppresses that Crump had an organic brain impairment before the murder took place and that he was actively alcoholic, which in the perception of his attorney Dovey Roundtree made him “incapable of clear communication, incapable of complex thought, incapable of grasping the full weight of his predicament, incapable most of all, of a murder executed with the stealth and precision and forethought of Mary Meyer’s [murder].” (Mary’s Mosaic, p. 318).

Further accusing me of concealing the fact that Crump had a criminal record before the Meyer murder (which consisted of the unspeakable, heinous crime of having been twice arrested for disorderly conduct, along with having served a 60-day jail sentence for shoplifting – all of which I mention on page 53), Ms. Pease wants her followers to believe that because of Crump’s subsequent career in crime, this is the ultimate sine qua non proof of Ray Crump’s having murdered Mary Meyer. The only thing that becomes clear here is that any psychological understanding and sophistication of the human condition completely eludes Lisa Pease; she’s unable to comprehend how an already psychologically impaired individual subjected to continued abuse over a nine-month period in jail (which according to his attorney Dovey Roundtree likely included sexual assaults) could damage someone to the point of becoming a hardened criminal. And so in Pease’s fantasy world, nothing matters (or is able to be grasped) except her distorted perception of her own opinions that have no real basis in factual evidence.

But not yet content, Pease wants her supporters to believe that all of this “illustrates Janney’s shortcomings as a researcher.” She goes on to attempt to prove that I next have “distorted the math” and time intervals in showing that there was a second “Negro male” eluding capture by police immediately following Meyer’s murder. Either Pease didn’t read carefully what I wrote, or she is intellectually challenged by the English language. In either case, she proves only one thing: she hasn’t read the trial transcript. Indeed, her own shortcomings as a researcher won’t even allow her to be factually accurate when quoting what I wrote. “Detective Warner arrested Crump at 1:15pm,” writes Pease, which is not only incorrect (and not what I wrote), but reveals how little Pease actually understood what she read.

Very simply (Mary’s Mosaic, pp. 122-128), I demonstrate through an extensive study of the trial transcript, and in an interview with police officer Roderick Sylvis for this book, how he and his partner Frank Bignotti arrived at Fletcher’s Boat House at approximately 12:30pm in order to block the exits of anyone trying to leave the towpath area. That’s what they were supposed to do: wait in their patrol car and guard the exits, a concept that Lisa Pease again is unable to grasp. They waited for about “four or five minutes” and then began hatching a plan whereby Sylvis would begin walking eastward toward the murder scene via the towpath and Bignotti would do the same along the adjacent railroad bed and woods that separated the two. This planning and positioning of themselves, according to Sylvis, took another five minutes or so. We are now at approximately 12:40pm. As soon as they started out, the two officers spotted a young while couple walking westward on the railroad tracks, who they then approached and began talking to. In an interview with Sylvis in 2008, I asked him specifically how long this interrogation had taken. “At least five minutes, probably more,” said Sylvis. It is now conservatively past 12:45pm, and very possibly later, approaching 1:00pm, before the two officers start their journey eastward toward the murder scene.

Sylvis told the court that he walked “approximately a mile east on the towpath, at which point he saw “a head jut out of the woods momentarily, just for a second . . .” (Mary’s Mosaic, p.123). When I queried Sylvis about how long it took to walk the mile, he was very clear that he had walked “very slowly” and vigilantly, intermittently stopping to peer into the woods, and periodically calling out to his partner Frank Bignotti. During the interview, Sylvis told me he had to be have been walking for “about twenty minutes.” In my book, I gave him the benefit of doubt and stated that “it has to have been at least fifteen minutes or more” (p. 123), before he spotted the head of a second “Negro male.” That meant that the time was likely to be at the very least 1:15pm (the time Ray Crump was arrested, seven tenths of mile away) and likely significantly later.

Yet in Lisa Pease’s reverie, this too becomes incomprehensible for her to grasp. Furthermore, Ray Crump – according to the trial transcript – was already in the company of Detective John Warner sometime before 1:15pm at a location of one tenth of a mile east of the murder scene. I maintain that it could have been as much as ten to fifteen minutes before 1:15pm that Warner first spotted Crump (who Warner said “wasn’t running” when he first spotted the about-to-be defendant), before he started interrogating him – first asking him to produce his driver’s license, which Warner studied, then asking him a series of seven questions, before deciding that he would walk with Crump to his alleged fishing spot in order to help him retrieve his fishing gear that Crump said had fallen into the Potomac River. The trial transcript repeatedly documents that Crump was officially arrested at approximately 1:15pm by Detective Bernie Crooke, but he was in the company of Detective Warner before that time. Therefore, the “Negro male” spotted by officer Sylvis, who successfully eluded capture by police, couldn’t have been the defendant Ray Crump. This isn’t rocket science, but for the challenged Lisa Pease, it’s too much to tolerate, given her desperation to find some way to discredit me, whereby she finally resorts to attacking my educational credentials.

In addition, Ms. Pease can’t even seem to fathom or consider how “Lt. William L. Mitchell,” a man who told police he was jogging on the towpath when he passed Mary Meyer – allegedly just before the murder took place – told police that a “Negro male” matching Wiggins’ description was following her in an effort to frame Ray Crump. “Mitchell” would then testify against Crump at the murder trial nine months later in July 1965 as part of the CIA’s assassination operation. It doesn’t seem to matter to Pease that “Mitchell” has never been able to be located since the trial, or that his known address during that time was documented as a “CIA safe house” by three separate former CIA employees. At the time of trial in July 1965, Mitchell told a reporter that he had since retired from the military and was now a mathematics instructor at Georgetown University – yet no record of his employment there could ever be located, nor was there ever any bona-fide military service record located for “Mitchell,” either in the Pentagon where he was listed in the directory at the time of the murder, or in the main military data base in St. Louis. This was thoroughly researched by the Peabody Award-winning journalist Roger Charles, as discussed in my book, a fact that Pease fails to mention in one of her many deliberate omissions, which also included Damore’s consultation with L. Fletcher Prouty (as documented by Damore’s attorney James H. Smith) to finally understand who “Mitchell” was, before Damore confronted him. Of course, Lisa Pease is entitled to whatever flawed point of view she wants to embrace, but she’s not entitled to her own set of facts.

The rest of Pease’s long-winded misstatements criticizing author Leo Damore, Timothy Leary, Robert Morrow, Gregory Douglas and other sources who I attempted to unravel – explicitly noting their deficiencies and limitations – completely obfuscates the clarity of the emerging picture: Placed in a larger context, and juxtaposed with firm documentation, the aggregate unfolding scenario clearly indicates that Mary Meyer’s life was ended by a CIA assassination. But in the Pease-DiEugenio fantasy world, people are either all white or all black, complete truth-tellers or liars, completely reliable or unreliable. There are no shades of grey; there is no ambiguity; and there is no room for the analysis of intricacy and complexity.

And this is why the Pease-DiEugenio brand of journalistic sophistication (or lack thereof) can’t seem to fathom how JFK advisor Kenneth P. O’Donnell could somehow go on the official record after the 1976 National Enquirer exposé about the Meyer-Kennedy affair and defend the shining Camelot myth in his attempt to negate that there had been a romantic affair between Mary Pinchot Meyer and President Kennedy; yet only a year later, shortly before his death, confide to author Leo Damore some of the intimate details of their relationship. In the same way that O’Donnell never talked publically about how the FBI had discounted his testimony that the Presidential motorcade in Dallas was driving into an ambush where at least two shots had come “from behind the fence [on the grassy knoll],” in front of the motorcade, O’Donnell only mentioned this reality to insiders, which was confirmed twenty-five years later by Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill in his 1987 memoir Man of The House. Both Leo Damore and his attorney James H. Smith worked on one of O’Donnell’s Massachusetts gubernatorial campaigns where the three had become good friends. Yet Lisa Pease can’t fathom that there were many things O’Donnell didn’t want to share publically, and would only confide privately to the people he trusted.

Fabricating evidence is a fatal error for any kind of investigative reporter or critic. What kind of a mindset (or person) would do this? Only a callow, dogmatic “true believer” in the childish Camelot myth, who cannot tolerate being challenged, resorts to a riddled analysis that is filled with factual errors and deliberate omissions and misstatements. This episode in their increasingly virulent and intolerant criticism is both tragic and unfortunate, because some (but not all) of the work of Pease and DiEugenio has made a significant contribution to JFK assassination historical research.

For example, James DiEugenio’s deconstruction of Chris Matthew’s recent book on JFK was an insightful analysis of a flawed work. In addition, DiEugenio and Pease together edited a useful anthology of articles on the assassinations of the 1960s. However, what they have done to Mary’s Mosaic is all too similar to what they do to other first-time authors writing about the JFK assassination: they delight in subjecting those who dare to write about the Kennedy assassination (in a way that conflicts with their own historical interpretations) to the “CTKA buzz-saw.”

So, readers and followers beware (those of you who have the patience to read many of their long and pompous reviews): these two Los Angelinos have an extremely inflated opinion of their own importance in the JFK assassination debate. Fortunately, books last; and reviews are forgotten weeks after they are written (if not sooner). Moreover, we are living in the 21^st century. In spite of the fact that Pease and DiEugenio would surely resurrect book burnings for those works of which they disapprove – establishing a modern-day JFK assassination Index Librorum Prohibitorum if they could do so –modern-day JFK researchers and the American public do not hunger for another Torquemada or Cardinal Bellarmine. I dare say that if Pease and DiEugenio had been in charge of Galileo’s heresy trial in Rome, he would have been sentenced to burn at the stake, instead of to the life imprisonment (house arrest) levied on him by the Holy Office.

(This article is also posted on Lew Rockwell.com: http://lewrockwell.c...anney3.1.1.html )

I concur with what Mr. Janney has written above. It is something that has needed to be said for a long time.

[Guest Tom Scully]

...........................................................

If you are going to write a book about an assassinated, popular president and a mistress who you claim fed him illegal drugs, why not be scholarly and responsible enough to dig deep and cover much more of the actual history, and if you aren't prepared to do that, why bother?

Isn't it fair to say there are Rockefellers and CIA spooks a bit too embedded in the ties to Mimi Alford, Plimpton & Debevoise, and John McCloy, as well as to three generations of the Bush family?

A little more on the other ushers in peter Matthiessen's wedding, aside from Cass Canfield's stepson, Blair Fuller. There was George Ohrstrom, the son of a wall street brokerage chief who was barred from the securities business until Prescott Bush interceded on his behalf, with the S.E.C.

There was Carroll L. Wainwright, brother of a right wing WWII OSS officer, Stuyvesant, who later served two terms in the U.S. House. Carroll Wainwriight's son married Letitia Baldridge's only wedding party attendant, her niece Alice E. Baldridge. Carroll Wainwright is described :

740 Park: The Story of the World's Richest Apartment Building - Google Books Result

books.google.com/books?isbn=0385512090.. . Michael Gross - 2005 - Architecture - 561 pages

The Story of the World's Richest Apartment Building Michael Gross. Judy Laughlin recalls that her brother-in-law Carroll Wainwright, the Rockefeller family lawyer.....

...and Matthiessen usher Charles Lord, Skull and Bones '49, reciprocated when he married :

MISS M. PLUNKETT WED IN SOUTHPORT; Fairfield Girl Becomes of Charles Edwin Lord, a Graduate of Yale in '49 Webster--Miller

New York Times - Apr 23, 1950

.....The ushers were William S. Coffin of New Haven, Daniel P. Davison of Locust Valley, L. L; Thomas H. Guinzberg, David M. Lippincott and Vance Van 1?ine of New York, James N. Heald of Worcester, Mass.; Roger G. Kennedy of St. Paul, Peter Mathiessen of Stamford,

Daniel P. Davison, of course, was the son of F. Trubee Davison :

Oswald and the CIA: The Documented Truth about the Unknown ... - Google Books Result

books.google.com/books?isbn=1602392536... John Newman - 2008 - Biography & Autobiography - 669 pages

....The Case of the Two Priscillas

.....To understand the significance of this form, we must return to the 1956 Cunningham memo of August 23. There is something terribly wrong about the contents of this CIA document. It said that Security Office files showed Priscilla's middle initial was "L for Livingston and is not R."8 That the Security Office had uncovered this kind of error is perhaps understandable, but the next sentence was extraordinary: "She was apparently born 23 September 1922 in Stockholm, Sweden, rather than 19 July 1928 at Glen Cove, New York." The Cunningham memo made no attempt to explain this transformation. Instead, the memo rather matter-of-factly proceeded to explain the new history of Priscilla this way:

She was utilized by OSO in 1943 and 1944. Clearance was based on Civil Service Commission rating of eligibility which in turn was based on a favorable investigation and record checks. An FBI record check completed 21 August 1956 was returned NIS [Naval Investigative Service].

The 1928 birth date carried in Priscilla Johnson's CIA records for the preceding four years could not be reconciled with this new data unless a fifteen-year-old girl, not yet out of high school, had been working for the Office of Special Operations during World War Two.

The Cunningham memo is all the more incredible because it makes no attempt whatsoever to reconcile the incongruity between these two seemingly different Priscilla Johnsons, one an OSO veteran at the time the other was a child. Moreover, this time there was no mention of adverse information about Priscilla's left wing activities. There appears to be too many egregious errors by the Office of Security, and therefore this story does not sound believable.....

Historians now have the unenviable task of trying to figure out whether the CIA was inventing a false Priscilla Johnson or whether it was incapable of telling the difference between two people born five years and three thousand miles apart-not to mention possessing different middle names. The Central Intelligence Agency owes the American public an explanation for the case of the two Priscillas, if for no other reason than because a Priscilla Johnson-whom we know to be real-did in fact conduct the longest interview on record with the accused assassin of President Kennedy.

The most important question is this: What was the real Priscilla Johnson doing that led the CIA to reopen its interest in her in 1956? The answer might lie in an Agency interest about her 1955 to 1956 sojourn in the Soviet Union. It would not be unusual for the Agency to want to debrief someone who had recently returned from there. But why do two Priscillas then appear in the CIA's files? To proceed logically here, from Priscilla's return from Russia in April 1956 to the emergence in August of the CIA two-Priscillas problem requires more information than we have in the files. One new lead comes from a heretofore unconnected recollection of Priscilla's. It concerns a neighbor, who was a close friend and regular tennis partner of Stuart Johnson's, Priscilla's father. Sometime soon after her return from the Soviet Union, this friend asked Stuart if he might speak with Priscilla about her experiences in Moscow. The meeting took place, and Priscilla told the man what she could remember about her stay in Moscow. That man, who had known her since she was a small child, was F. Trubee Davidson. He worked for the CIA.9

Looking back on her experience now, Priscilla believes it is possi ble that Davidson "was waiting for me to grow up to recruit me." It is an intriguing thought, and one that she has had about one other person too. "The other person who was waiting for me to grow up," she recalls, "was Cord Meyer." While we do not know the extent of Cord Meyer's knowledge or interest in Johnson up to the time that the CIA closed out its interest in her in January 1957, he does show up the next time they become interested.

More than a year after this close-out, the CIA again reopened its interest in Priscilla Johnson. On April 10, 1958, CIA headquarters sent a cable to a place that is still classified but which, from all indications, was one of its stations in Western Europe. It contained this detailed and condescending description of Johnson referred to earlier. It is worth repeating in full:

Subj DOB July 1928. MA Radcliffe 1952. From wealthy Long Island Famil[y]. Excellent scholastic rating. Application [for] KUBARK [CIA] employment 1952 rejected because some associates and memberships would have required more investigation than thought worthwhile. Once [a] member of United World Federalists; thought liberal, international-minded, anti-communist. Translator, current Digest of Soviet Press, New York, 1954. Considered by present KUBARK employee [who] knew her [at] Harvard to have been "screwball" then; considered "goofy, mixed up" when applied KUBARK employment. No recent data. No Headquarters record [of] prior KUBARK use."

The releasing official listed on the bottom left of this cable was then the CIA's chief of Investigations and Operational Support. His name was Cord Meyer, Jr.

Again the question is: Why the renewed CIA interest in Priscilla? The answer: Because she was planning to return to the Soviet Union. Cord Meyer's cable in April occurred after her visa application, during the period she was waiting for it to be approved. "I went to Cairo in February 1958," Priscilla remembers, "to see a boyfriend. Then in March of 1958 I went to Paris, and did a little translating in a building on Haussmann Boulevard."" There she worked for "someone I knew either for Radio Liberty or the Congress for Cultural Freedom." While in Paris she applied to the Soviet consulate to go to the U.S.S.R. It "took a couple of months" for the Soviets to approve it, and Priscilla arrived in Moscow for the third time on July 4, 1958.

On May 6, 1958-again, possibly on behalf of SR/10-Chief, CU OA submitted a request for an operational approval on Johnson. The operation for which she was being considered is still classified, but we may presume that SR/10 wished to take advantage of her as a "legal traveler" to the Soviet Union in some sort of passive collection role. This time the Security Office furnished a "summary of derogatory information."" Whereas in 1956 the Office of Security failed to furnish CUOA the 1953 "derogatory" information on Priscilla, there was no problem finding this information in 1958. The April 10 Cord Meyer cable, for example, made clear reference to her earlier security rejection.

The story after the Cord Meyer "screwball" cable is intriguing. There is evidence to suggest that the CIA, in June 1958, discovered the problem of the two Priscilla Johnsons. A June 6, 1958, internal CIA handwritten note "for the record" on SO 71589, which is definitely one of the real Priscilla's CIA numbers, reads:

SO stated this date that which had been previously written was being revised and should be coming down today. In addition [name redacted] stated that [name or office redacted], who is handling the memo, doubted if subject would be utilized because of the record.14

This may indicate that the Stockholm Priscilla, whose Security Office and FBI records checks had been favorable, was being revised to reflect the real Glen Cove, New York, Priscilla. The author of this June 6 memo and office from which it came are still classified, but it is clear that the author, whoever it was, felt that a request to use Johnson in an operational role in the summer of 1958 had been or was about to be killed.

The ax came three weeks later, on June 27, as the result of a memorandum from an office whose identity is still classified. In fact, the June 27 memo itself is still entirely classified, and we know of its existence only because of a passing reference to it in another CIA memorandum almost six years later." The possibility exists that while SR/10 had again initiated a request to use Johnson, it was a different office that killed the plan. This is at least suggested by the fact that SR/10 did not submit a Form 937 canceling their interest until August 28.16

Fourteen and a half months later, Priscilla Johnson was on her way back to Moscow again, as a reporter for the North American News Alliance (NANA). While she was in an airplane somewhere over the Atlantic, another reporter, Aline Mosby, managed to land the first formal interview with Lee Harvey Oswald.....

It turns out that the other Priscilla Johnson was married to OSS and CIA agent Thomas Frederick McCoy and was born in Stockholm to U.S. diplomat Hallett Johnson.

What are the odds that Mimi Alford's best friend, Marion Stuart Pillsbury, is the first person she claims she told the details of her 1960's affair with JFK, circa 1991 when Stuart Pillsbury just happens to begin a position she has held now for more than two decades, executive director of the David Rockefeller Fund, and that Hallett Johnson happened to belong to the same intimate little club in Bar Harbor, ME., of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and sons Nelson and David Rockefeller, and that the parents of Peter Matthiessen and George Plimpton Paris Review partner, John PC Train, who also happened to employ Thomas Devine, was the son of Arthur C. Train, who also happened to be well acquainted with Hallett Johnson?

The rich man and the kingdom: John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and the ...

books.google.com Albert F. Schenkel - 1995 - 248 pages - Snippet view

....Rockefeller's favorite Mount Desert Island club was the Pot and Kettle Club of Bar Harbor, which maintained lands for riding and driving around the island; he joined in 1935, and by 1944 its membership included such notables as Walter Lippmann, Harper Sibley, and Yale president James R. Angell." ......

Diplomatic memoirs: serious and frivolous

books.google.com Hallett Johnson - 1963 - 207 pages

....serious and frivolous Hallett Johnson. of giving everything to his job,

skilled ability to deal with foreigners, an extremely attractive personality

and forthright honesty. I am still, at 75, looking for other constructive

work to be done. I will now give in lighter vein an account of our residence

and travels in the United States. We settled in Princeton, which as the

former President of the University, Harold Dodds, remarked, "is the nearest

thing to an American Athens that America has ever had." It was convenient to

be near New York, Philadelphia, and I still could not resist making visits to

Washington. Moreover, my son Hallett lived in Princeton with his lovely wife

Mary Ellen, Jay Cooke's daughter, and their four children: Hallett 3rd, Mary

Glendenning, Livingston and Elizabeth. My son has a fine Revolutionary stone

house and 75 acres.

He runs a three-ring circus as a New York commuter, a farmer and a father.

Each of my daughters has six children. Is immortality given us through our

sixteen grandchildren? The summers we spend in our cottage at Bar Harbor on

Mount Desert Island, which is one of the most beautiful spots in the country

and where the mountains come down to the sea. I served there for some time as

a Governor of the Pot and Kettle and Bar Harbor clubs, which gave me some

room for my restless energy.

The Pot and Kettle is a delightful 60-year-old club limited to 60 men.

Formerly like The Rabbit in Philadelphia members cooked their own meals but

in recent years they have ceased to be culinary experts.

We still, however, wear a chef's cap and gown for the cocktail hour before

our weekly lunches and are not allowed to have a cocktail before we put on

this uniform. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., came but seldom, but it was

remarkable to see him in a and gown. Governor Nelson Rockefeller and another

son, David, are still members. We tried to get the most distinguished

political and other speakers at these luncheons and after the serious part,

stories were told, which were very humorous and not always proper. We found

that the servant question had utterly changed from earlier years. They can

still be had with difficulty but the local people in Maine who are willing to

do this type of work are quaint characters. Fishing in a clear Maine lake,

irrespective of results, is enjoyable, and I sometimes return empty-handed

after a few ....

Bar Harbor to Give Concert Tuesday; British War Relief Will...

New York Times - Jul 20, 1941

Kenarden Lodge, the Summer estate of Mrs. John T. Dorrance, will be the scene of a concert on Tuesday to be given for the benefit of the British War Relief

..........

..... – to say nothing of the women who have come forward (the most recent is Mimi Beardsley Alford in 2012) – supposed to go on believing “The Doctrine of Pease and DiEugenio” that this was all just a “Republican Party” or “CIA” plot to discredit President Kennedy. Following “the two McCarthyites of the JFK assassination research community,” as one researcher recently put it, is like walking into a never-ending fantasy world of ignorance, hopefully having been convinced that the real truth has just been dispensed, when all that has taken place in this case is Pease’s fabricating evidence in order to gin up “facts” to support her delusions.....

No, Mr. Janney, although seen through the prism of our most benevolent view of your motives,we understand you are programmed to make a nice pay day from the hyping of sources with deep and disturbing conflicts, and the single source, sensational account from Timothy Leary, and ignore that Skull and Bones (Whitney surrogate Tex McCrary, F. Trubee Davison, Whitney financial advisor and Paris Review's John PC Train, Thomas Guinzburg who "hired" Jackie "O") and the Rockefellers and CIA have left their greasy fingerprints all over the U.S. publishing "offerings" and BOTH Priscilla Johnsons, we know what we know and it is much more persuasive than your opinion of Pease, Di Eugenio, CTKA, and your "nothing to see here" about a “Republican Party” or “CIA” plot to discredit President Kennedy. The real Priscilla Johnson and the Paris Review just happened to be mentored and paid by the same sources, and the "fake" Priscilla just happens to have a daddy who played with the Rockefellers. Mimi Alford just happened to hold it all in for nearly 30 years and then confess to David Rockefeller's key aide.

[Guest Tom Scully]

Thank you, Jim. I stumbled on this late last night after I posted about my suspicion that the Paris Review "boys" and Priscilla Johnson and Mimi Alford have the same masters.

What I found most amazing are in the reaction in the 27 comments posted in response to the Salon.com article. Nelson Aldrich is a Rockefeller and the only credible person in the group of Plimpton, Matthiessen, Train, Sadruddin, et al. It is ironic that almost all of the Salon.com comments are from CIA/Paris Review apologists.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/salon-article-rekindles-debate-about-paris-review-and-c-i-a/

May 29, 2012, 2:13 pm 2

Salon Article Rekindles Debate about Paris Review and C.I.A.

By JENNIFER SCHUESSLER

...Mr. Matthiessen, who declined to talk with Mr Whitney, has long denied that the C.I.A. had any influence on the magazine or given it any money. “I used The Paris Review as a cover, there’s no question of that,” he told The New York Times in 2008. “But the C.I.A. had nothing to do with Paris Review.”

But Mr. Whitney, an editor at the journal Guernica, has emerged from the Paris Review’s archives at the Morgan Library & Museum in Manhattan with evidence that he says suggests otherwise. The archives, he contends, reveal “a number of never-reported C.I.A. ties that bypass Matthiessen or outlive his official tenure at the Agency.”....

http://www.salon.com/2012/05/27/exclusive_the_paris_review_the_cold_war_and_the_cia/#comments

....Nelson Aldrich, who began as a Review editor in 1958, writes in his oral history of Plimpton, “George, Being George,” that he left the Review to join the CIA’s Congress for Cultural Freedom. From the Morgan letters, it is clear his work for the two organizations brought them closer, and when he left the Review in 1961, he helped ensure it would be working in concert with the Congress.

Almost every major emerging author of the era, every book on the three assassinations of the sixties, and the character assassinations of the Kennedys emanate from the same small cabal and money sources, and to those Salon.com commenters, it is an admirable condition. We are screwed, there really are just a handful of sources with any integrity.

[Robert Charles-Dunne]

5. He then says there was no forensic evidence to link Crump to the crime scene. In his unrepetant defense of a man who went on to become a habitual and violent criminal, one who used guns and firebombs to terrorize many innocent people, he leaves out a rather relevant fact.; Crump was found soaking wet in some underbrush near a culvert. In other words, in those valuable minutes on the river bed and in the underbrush, he easily could have washed off the nitrates from the weapon, and even buried the handgun. He also had his fly down--geez Peter I wonder why? And in his desire to escape recognition, he had ditched his cap and jacket. When the witness Wiggins approached the scene he said Crump was the man he saw standing over the body. If this is not probable cause, i don't know what is. And this is why Roundtree would not put him on the stand. He would have been demolished.

I don’t wish to comment on Janney’s book, as I haven’t read it. But I have read several essays and posts by Jim and Lisa and am troubled by their apparent disregard for certain facts in the case in their zeal to eviscerate Janney and/or his book. And their willingness to keep their own readers ignorant of facts that require inclusion in any fair assessment of this event.

That Ray Crump subsequently became a violent criminal is rendered irrelevant by a singular, undeniable fact: this detail couldn’t have been known by any party at the time of the trial.

An anachronistic prediction of criminality in the future, in order to convict a man today, is not an element of law. It is evidence of the weakness of the case, for those who have no forensic evidence instead stretch the bounds of credulity, to convict a man based upon subsequent behaviour. Needless to say, such bumbling today would have been rendered unnecessary were the grounds to convict present at time of trial, yet they remain absent even unto today. It is unseemly for persons of Jim and Lisa’s stature to resort to the use of so transparent a debate tactic to achieve what they otherwise cannot.

Nor have I ever read any indication that Jim and Lisa have ever entertained the notion that any part of Crump’s subsequent behaviour may have been instigated or exacerbated by the experience of being falsely accused of murder, with all its attendant stresses and anxieties. Better men have cracked for less.

Let us say that for us, today, Crump’s later violent criminal acts suggest he was prone to such behaviour. Fair enough. What is the evidence that he indulged in such behaviour with Meyer? There was none then, and is none today. Jack The Ripper murdered some women. That this is true doesn’t necessitate that he killed all women who were ever murdered. If I have robbed a dozen banks, and been caught for each, it doesn’t follow that I am automatically guilty of robbing every other bank that’s ever been held up. This entire line of reasoning is out of bounds for far more than one reason alone.

Such stacking of the deck is then compounded by inference after innuendo in a doomed effort to retroactively convict Crump. He ditched his outerwear, he was wet, his fly was at half mast, he washed off the nitrates, he buried the murder weapon. Why, yes, all of that could have happened (although all evidence of nitrates doesn’t simply disappear or vanish upon contact with water). But in order to demonstrate one's case, one would need to prove that they did happen, not simply that they are possible, or be revealed as guilty of precisely the same degree of baseless supposition as the author they pillory for purportedly doing the same.

Jim and Lisa leave unreported the extent of police resources used to solve the Meyer murder case, no doubt because to admit to their own readers the fervent efforts employed by DCPD would illustrate just how unlikely it was that Crump could ditch the weapon in a place where police were forever after unable to locate it. It does not make one’s case more persuasive to ignore that which impeaches it. It just makes one appear dishonest for failing to disclose so salient a fact, simply because one has no credible rationale for it.

It is also untrue to state that Dovey Roundtree refrained from placing Crump on the stand because she thought it would prove his guilt. She did so because Crump was clearly a mentally defective character of low intelligence, education and breeding.

Yes, the prosecutor could have destroyed him on the stand, because Crump had the same mental acuity as the likes of Helen Markham and Mary Bledsoe. Being an idiot doesn’t make one guilty of anything, but it certainly makes it easier for opposing counsel to create the impression of guilt. Race, class, vocabulary, breeding and comportment are all invariably part of a jury’s considerations, though they should not be. Not one of those factors would have favoured Crump on the stand. Dovey Roundtree made the right call, but Jim asserts without evidence the wrong motivations, in order to further his own cause where he otherwise cannot.

It is astonishing to me that writers with the decent track record that Jim and Lisa can proudly boast, are so willing to readily dispense with the legal requirements needed to obtain a conviction. The jury heard the case and found it lacking. No witness to the crime itself, no murder weapon, no ties between Crump and an even hypothetical weapon, no forensic indication that Crump had any interaction with Meyer at all. With so flimsy a prosecution case, upon what basis would Jim and Lisa have a jury pronounce guilt? Suspicion? Gut feelings? Race? Or is proximity to a crime all that it required? If so, let’s pronounce Oswald guilty and get on with our lives.

If Jim and Lisa believe that the jury reached an incorrect verdict because of something unknown to it, what was it the jury didn’t know then that we now do? I have yet to read a word from either Jim or Lisa disclosing a greater reason to believe in Crump’s guilt today than was available to the jury then.

That Jim and Lisa are demonstrably wrong about the Crump case doesn’t make Janney right. It’s not a zero sum game, and alternatives exist to both their respective scenarios.

I would note only what I have written here before. It is incredible to me that writers like Jim and Lisa, who correctly make use of every legal manoeuver in order to question Oswald’s guilt, which was never adjudged at trial, now dispense with the not guilty verdict rendered in Crump’s case on nothing more than their own inferences, preferences and suppositions.

If Peter Janney feels he is the victim of a "personal vendetta," perhaps it is because the reasoning used by his critics to convict Crump is so remarkably, risibly shoddy. And that has nothing to do with sourcing Leary, Hersh, et al. Janney can be entirely wrong about everything else, and yet still be right about Crump’s innocence. Certainly, nothing provided thus far by Jim and Lisa constitutes new evidence suggesting Crump’s guilt.

A prediction: this post will result in Jim providing a splenetic reply that asserts much, yet lacks anything approaching the proof required to convict Crump. If so, a reminder: vehemence is no substitute for proof. But if one doesn’t have the latter, it become self-defeating and transparent when one resorts to the former.

[Dawn Meredith]

"What are the odds that Mimi Alford's best friend, Marion Stuart Pillsbury, is the first person she claims she told the details of her 1960's affair with JFK, circa 1991 when Stuart Pillsbury just happens to begin a position she has held now for more than two decades, executive director of the David Rockefeller Fund, and that Hallett Johnson happened to belong to the same intimate little club in Bar Harbor, ME., of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and sons Nelson and David Rockefeller, and that the parents of Peter Matthiessen and George Plimpton Paris Review partner, John PC Train, who also happened to employ Thomas Devine, was the son of Arthur C. Train, who also happened to be well acquainted with Hallett Johnson?"

I don't think its a coincidence. I think we all got taken again.

Great work Tom.

Great find Tom. Puts her freaking "book" in total perspective. There are no "coincidences" in this case. Just meaningful ones.

Dawn

[Dawn Meredith]

5. He then says there was no forensic evidence to link Crump to the crime scene. In his unrepetant defense of a man who went on to become a habitual and violent criminal, one who used guns and firebombs to terrorize many innocent people, he leaves out a rather relevant fact.; Crump was found soaking wet in some underbrush near a culvert. In other words, in those valuable minutes on the river bed and in the underbrush, he easily could have washed off the nitrates from the weapon, and even buried the handgun. He also had his fly down--geez Peter I wonder why? And in his desire to escape recognition, he had ditched his cap and jacket. When the witness Wiggins approached the scene he said Crump was the man he saw standing over the body. If this is not probable cause, i don't know what is. And this is why Roundtree would not put him on the stand. He would have been demolished.

I don’t wish to comment on Janney’s book, as I haven’t read it. But I have read several essays and posts by Jim and Lisa and am troubled by their apparent disregard for certain facts in the case in their zeal to eviscerate Janney and/or his book. And their willingness to keep their own readers ignorant of facts that require inclusion in any fair assessment of this event.

That Ray Crump subsequently became a violent criminal is rendered irrelevant by a singular, undeniable fact: this detail couldn’t have been known by any party at the time of the trial.

An anachronistic prediction of criminality in the future, in order to convict a man today, is not an element of law. It is evidence of the weakness of the case, for those who have no forensic evidence instead stretch the bounds of credulity, to convict a man based upon subsequent behaviour. Needless to say, such bumbling today would have been rendered unnecessary were the grounds to convict present at time of trial, yet they remain absent even unto today. It is unseemly for persons of Jim and Lisa’s stature to resort to the use of so transparent a debate tactic to achieve what they otherwise cannot.

Nor have I ever read any indication that Jim and Lisa have ever entertained the notion that any part of Crump’s subsequent behaviour may have been instigated or exacerbated by the experience of being falsely accused of murder, with all its attendant stresses and anxieties. Better men have cracked for less.

Let us say that for us, today, Crump’s later violent criminal acts suggest he was prone to such behaviour. Fair enough. What is the evidence that he indulged in such behaviour with Meyer? There was none then, and is none today. Jack The Ripper murdered some women. That this is true doesn’t necessitate that he killed all women who were ever murdered. If I have robbed a dozen banks, and been caught for each, it doesn’t follow that I am automatically guilty of robbing every other bank that’s ever been held up. This entire line of reasoning is out of bounds for far more than one reason alone.

Such stacking of the deck is then compounded by inference after innuendo in a doomed effort to retroactively convict Crump. He ditched his outerwear, he was wet, his fly was at half mast, he washed off the nitrates, he buried the murder weapon. Why, yes, all of that could have happened (although all evidence of nitrates doesn’t simply disappear or vanish upon contact with water). But in order to demonstrate one's case, one would need to prove that they did happen, not simply that they are possible, or be revealed as guilty of precisely the same degree of baseless supposition as the author they pillory for purportedly doing the same.

Jim and Lisa leave unreported the extent of police resources used to solve the Meyer murder case, no doubt because to admit to their own readers the fervent efforts employed by DCPD would illustrate just how unlikely it was that Crump could ditch the weapon in a place where police were forever after unable to locate it. It does not make one’s case more persuasive to ignore that which impeaches it. It just makes one appear dishonest for failing to disclose so salient a fact, simply because one has no credible rationale for it.

It is also untrue to state that Dovey Roundtree refrained from placing Crump on the stand because she thought it would prove his guilt. She did so because Crump was clearly a mentally defective character of low intelligence, education and breeding.

Yes, the prosecutor could have destroyed him on the stand, because Crump had the same mental acuity as the likes of Helen Markham and Mary Bledsoe. Being an idiot doesn’t make one guilty of anything, but it certainly makes it easier for opposing counsel to create the impression of guilt. Race, class, vocabulary, breeding and comportment are all invariably part of a jury’s considerations, though they should not be. Not one of those factors would have favoured Crump on the stand. Dovey Roundtree made the right call, but Jim asserts without evidence the wrong motivations, in order to further his own cause where he otherwise cannot.

It is astonishing to me that writers with the decent track record that Jim and Lisa can proudly boast, are so willing to readily dispense with the legal requirements needed to obtain a conviction. The jury heard the case and found it lacking. No witness to the crime itself, no murder weapon, no ties between Crump and an even hypothetical weapon, no forensic indication that Crump had any interaction with Meyer at all. With so flimsy a prosecution case, upon what basis would Jim and Lisa have a jury pronounce guilt? Suspicion? Gut feelings? Race? Or is proximity to a crime all that it required? If so, let’s pronounce Oswald guilty and get on with our lives.

If Jim and Lisa believe that the jury reached an incorrect verdict because of something unknown to it, what was it the jury didn’t know then that we now do? I have yet to read a word from either Jim or Lisa disclosing a greater reason to believe in Crump’s guilt today than was available to the jury then.

That Jim and Lisa are demonstrably wrong about the Crump case doesn’t make Janney right. It’s not a zero sum game, and alternatives exist to both their respective scenarios.

I would note only what I have written here before. It is incredible to me that writers like Jim and Lisa, who correctly make use of every legal manoeuver in order to question Oswald’s guilt, which was never adjudged at trial, now dispense with the not guilty verdict rendered in Crump’s case on nothing more than their own inferences, preferences and suppositions.

If Peter Janney feels he is the victim of a "personal vendetta," perhaps it is because the reasoning used by his critics to convict Crump is so remarkably, risibly shoddy. And that has nothing to do with sourcing Leary, Hersh, et al. Janney can be entirely wrong about everything else, and yet still be right about Crump’s innocence. Certainly, nothing provided thus far by Jim and Lisa constitutes new evidence suggesting Crump’s guilt.

A prediction: this post will result in Jim providing a splenetic reply that asserts much, yet lacks anything approaching the proof required to convict Crump. If so, a reminder: vehemence is no substitute for proof. But if one doesn’t have the latter, it become self-defeating and transparent when one resorts to the former.

Very good points RCD. Many lawyers, including my husband, never put a client on the stand. (And he has gotten way more not guilty verdicts than guilty) And one like Crump would have been torn apart by a seasoned DA. Given how often black men are found guilty based on very little evidence, the fact that a jury found Crump innocent speaks volumes.

From all that I have read about this case I have never believed Crump killed Mary. That is just too pat an explanation for a murder that demands a closer look.

Dawn

[Douglas Caddy]

Caddy, that is because the quality of your information and depth of review of the JFK case is about as sophisticated as his.

We don't need any more of these silly Caddy/Janney distractions the year before the 50th.

We need to lead with our best.

If not, we deserve to lose.

Jim, you are a talented writer and an energetic researcher and your knowledge of the JFK assassination is vast. You are also totally clueless about the fact that your constant attitude of “my way or the highway” towards many others who write on the topic is self-defeating when by your merely showing common courtesy and self-restraint would end any criticism by those upset with your methods. Such a change in methods would undoubtedly engender even wider admiration and recognition of your work.

[Guest Tom Scully]

Mr. Janney, you are definitely out of your league. If you have no hidden agenda, then I am satisfied after reading your rant about Ms. Pease, Mr. Di Eugenio, and CTKA, that you are an empty suit.

Warning: Reading the entire post excerpted below may give you a headache and eye strain, but you will see a grouping or related relevant happenings and connections of individuals of interest never presented before, all in one place,:

"What are the odds that Mimi Alford's best friend, Marion Stuart Pillsbury, is the first person she claims she told the details of her 1960's affair with JFK, circa 1991 when Stuart Pillsbury just happens to begin a position she has held now for more than two decades, executive director of the David Rockefeller Fund, and that Hallett Johnson happened to belong to the same intimate little club in Bar Harbor, ME., of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and sons Nelson and David Rockefeller, and that the parents of Peter Matthiessen and George Plimpton Paris Review partner, John PC Train, who also happened to employ Thomas Devine, was the son of Arthur C. Train, who also happened to be well acquainted with Hallett Johnson?"

I don't think its a coincidence. I think we all got taken again.

Great work Tom.

http://www.legacy.co...d&pid=151084916

L. PHILIP EWALD

EWALD--L. Philip, died at the age of 91 in Greenwich, CT, on May 8, 2011. A graduate of Groton School and Yale, he served as an Officer in Naval Intelligence during WWII. After a long career in publishing management, he joined Frank Pace, Jr. and David Rockefeller to build and expand the International Executive Service Corps. to 150 countries. Married for 57 years to Elizabeth Johnston Ewald, who predeceased him, he is survived by their two sons, Duncan and Douglass....

..............................

[Mike Rago]

I found that article very hard to follow.

Edited July 20, 2012 by Mike Rago

[David McLean]

In critiquing Peter Janney's book, Jim and Lisa seem to want to throw out the baby and the bathwater, adding gratuitous insults along the way. What stood out in Mary's Mosaic was the key role Jim Angleton and Allen Dulles played in keeping the lid on a renegade insider Mary Pinchot Meyer and her errant boyfriend JFK. Both died. Hmmm? How, Why? That's what we all want to know. Jim ought not impugn Peter's motives in trying to unravel his own CIA father's role in her death. Framing Crump for a CIA hit is a scenario that needs more examination. Especially having read H.P. Albarelli Jr's vast book on the CIA murder of another CIA-aligned Insider.

[David McLean]

I should not have implied Dulles palyed the active part - as far as we know - in securing Mary's diary, but "No Knock" Angleton and close collaborator Dulles were both definitely active in tying up loose ends in the JFK hit.

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

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Tom, would you consider typing up a summary of these links that would be more clear for the General Reader? I think you could keep most of this and just arrange an intro with a few sharper topic sentences thrown in here or there. Something stand-alone that I could post everywhere including places where readers of Mimis book might see it?

Edited July 20, 2012 by Nathaniel Heidenheimer